On the panel were Paul Nolan from Dawn Meats, suckler farmers Robin Talbot, Christy Comerford and Sam Chesney, Phelim O’Neil from the Irish Farmers Journal and editor Justin McCarthy, who chaired the session.

Justin McCarthy: To open up the debate on where the Irish beef industry is going, we’ve heard from some very efficient farmers for whom bull beef is delivering good profits, Paul Nolan what’s your take on this?

Paul Nolan: I come from a family butcher that stems back five generations and one thing I learned from my father was that the customer is always right. In terms of the bigger picture today is that the message is still true. We know bulls are profitable as things stand. There are two things at play. One, if everyone went at it, it would soon become a problem. The second thing is within our markets, if you look at Britain there’s a tradition there of steers and heifers, with a tolerance for a percentage of young bull meat.

When you talk to customers in Germany and Italy, and some of our better markets, they keep telling us: “we produce bulls at home, your unique selling point is your tremendous flavour from your grass feed steers and heifers”, which is something that they don’t produce themselves, so I think it’s a question of marrying those together and putting it into your marketing mix. The worst thing we can do is to say simply that if bull production is the best show in town then that’s what we should do because then the markets get flooded.

The worst thing we can do is to say simply that if bull production is the best show in town

JMcC: Is the statement scientific from you that bull beef has lower eating quality than steers or heifers?

PN: I think that’s a very tricky question, that would require a very tricky answer and what I mean by that that there are bulls under a certain age (16 months) that are okay – there’s nothing wrong, but they’re slightly immature. Sixteen to 18 months works, but the market kicks against that. Once you get over 19 months, very quickly there is a higher incidence of unpleasant odours and slightly tougher meat.

Sean Mullooly contributed to the writing of this article.

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